


all love starts as a scheme

by joisattempting



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Chaos, Crack Treated Seriously, Diners, F/M, First Dates, I'LL WRITE SOMETHING SERIOUS AFTER I PROMISE, M/M, Martin's Middle Name is Keats, PLEASE DON'T HATE THIS I, chicken strips, date crashing, ft hozier, heavily implicit jonmartin bc i cannot be subtle, hiding underneath tables, i'd like to apologise to jonny sims for turning his beautifully-written podcast into, i'm posting this during english class, idk what that means but i feel like it fits, listen idk either i'm just the writer, man bun tim stoker supremacy, martin is from nottingham woo, my style does not match humour whatsoever but here we are, no serious writing we kayak like tim, the only reason i headcanon this is bc he's got a similar accent to my biology teacher, this is my first tma fic so clearly we're off to a great start, what is this, whatever this is, why did I make this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 15:22:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30057519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisattempting/pseuds/joisattempting
Summary: martin, daisy, jon and basira just want to make sure tim and sasha's first date goes well.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	all love starts as a scheme

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kingofthelosers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingofthelosers/gifts).



> what's popping tma ao3 i'm jo and i'm excited but more nervous to be here <3
> 
> uHHhhhh this is my first fic for tma specifically so pls don't judge me too hard i'm sensitive and can't take criticism without crying but anyway that's beside the point. shoutout to jules for talking about this idea with me during The Early Days of my tma listening, you're the best and i hope this doesn't disappoint you or anybody out there reading this. i have some other stuff planned that's more serious and actually makes a shred of sense, so i'm hoping i have the motivation and focus to actually write them lmao. i'm very sorry in advance, but i hope this makes at least one person laugh :)
> 
> all the best, 
> 
> jo <3
> 
> \--
> 
> tw for brief mention of body shaming & bruises
> 
> title cruelly stolen from the song "skeleton appreciation day in vestal, ny (bones)” by will wood and the tapeworms!
> 
> inspo for the tube scene comes from the top tier fic "watermelon sugar (high)" by @hysteries and the hozier shit from "we should ride this wave to shore" by @ClarionGlass :)

For what it was worth, Martin really, truly, genuinely hadn’t intended to eavesdrop. 

His original plan had been to swing briefly by Tim and Sasha’s respective desks with his customary query regarding the probability that they’d want any tea at all, and then proceed to scurry off in apprehensive pursuit of Jon’s office to raise the aforementioned question with him. The Head Archivist’s dwelling, a domain of organised chaos behind the austere darkwood door and the glimmering plaque with his name engraved upon it in an unfriendly font, precarious piles of wrinkled statements and tape recorders deriving from dubious origins, was always pointedly put off till the conclusion of Martin’s daily lunchtime rounds. He liked to think that it was due to his own intuition and consideration of the man, that he figured Jon was doing something of Institute importance or recording, and he hadn’t wanted to bother him. Beneath his stammered excuses, however, was the resigned feeling that Jon didn’t, most likely, enjoy his presence very much.

Yes, his treatment of Martin had improved as the years ticked by in a flurry of keyboard noises, trips all over England in Tim’s garish, vain car for follow-up purposes, and office pranks that mostly involved cake and a certain freaky manager whose name began with E; but that wasn’t to say that Martin and Jon were very chummy at all. They were on the road to friendship, Martin liked to think, currently clumsily treading the line between a polite employee-boss relationship and being rather good friends. They went for drinks, sometimes with the other assistants, other times alone together, they texted sometimes. Hell, when Martin lay awake in his flat with nothing but the swarming darkness of his flat and the emaciated sliver of moonlight spilling through the dull navy drapes and onto the canned-peach-stained carpet for company, he dared crack open the heavy iron door in his head that kept his bottled-up feelings for Jon at bay. He was used to them clawing and scratching and clamouring from beyond the padlock and chain at this point. 

The point was, when he’d lingered behind a bookshelf to wait out Tim and Sasha’s conversation prior to approaching, it was most certainly not with the intention of overhearing the latter’s plans to pick her colleague up at five for dinner at some diner Martin frequented. 

And he certainly hadn’t intended to get tied up in the affair. 

“Snooping on the it couple’s dating life, are we?” a voice behind him quipped slyly, and Martin very nearly jumped so high he’d have made a hole in the ceiling. Basira leaned easily against the table, clutching a thick volume on nineteenth-century architecture in the hand that wasn’t supporting her bodyweight atop the polished wood. 

“Christ, Basira! Don’t just- just sneak up on me like that!” he hissed, nearly forgetting to whisper in order to maintain his cover from Tim and Sasha. He furrowed his brows in confusion, sweeping a rogue curl of muted ginger from his eyes. “What do you mean, the ‘it couple’? I don’t think they’ve been out before, unless they’re being subtle about it,” 

“They haven’t,” Basira confirmed with a brusque and short laugh, setting the book down and hazarding a glance at the pair. Tim half-sat on Sasha’s desk, a shit-eating smirk plastered across his face that could imply absolutely nothing platonic about the situation, while the latter rolled her eyes in mock irritation and made an unenthusiastic attempt at shooing him away so she could resume the exponentially riveting task of logging statements onto a spreadsheet. “But they might as well be. Daisy, Melanie and I’ve been suspecting it for ages. Tim’s got as much aptitude for subtlety as you’ve got spatial awareness,”

“Thanks for that,” Martin sighed, but the two of them grinned devilishly at one another. “God, I mean, they’re going  _ out _ ,”

The woman bit her lip, still wearing a smile riddled with mischief as her hazel eyes drifted towards the very much public display of affection before them once more. “Weird, right? This can go one of two ways, and I’d stand alone in the out-of-order lift up near Research with Elias to find out which,” she said, and Martin’s stomach was suddenly performing a gymnastics team that rivalled those showcased at the Olympics as a seedling of an idea buried itself deep within the soil of his mind. 

“Maybe we can make it happen, minus the pain and suffering of standing in the Research lift with the cake bastard,”

“Hey, cake bastard’s going through it right now. I caught divorce papers sitting in his desk drawer when he called me into his office on Wednesday. I think he saw me looking, though, because he closed it obnoxiously loudly, like, a second after,”

“Holy shit,” Martin said earnestly, lips twitching almost comically as he suppressed a bout of unrestrained laughter. “Maybe you’re worse than Tim at subtlety, Basira,”

“That’s an insult of the highest degree, you filthy animal,” the woman crossed her arms, glowering. “I’m appalled you would think so lowly of me,”

The man shrugged. “Okay, fine, you can sulk all you like, but you won’t hear my epic plan,”

At this, Basira immediately softened. “You’re a feral man, Martin Keats Blackwood. C’mon, let’s hear it,”

That was how, Martin supposed, he found himself squashed uncomfortably into a musty Tube seat (of course  _ he _ had to sit in the one with the questionable stain that spanned half the torn seat cloth), sharing an earbud with Jon and listening to some quiet, contemplative song by Hozier. It was oddly fitting that his boss was partial to the artist, though Martin wasn’t altogether certain as to why, as his soft blue eyes studied the man in front of him. Given the stunt they were about to pull in front of the London public, he appeared remarkably unbothered as he perched on the edge of his decidedly cleaner Tube seat with his chin cupped in his hand, staring penetratingly through the grimy opposite window as the train blazed through the murky gloom of the Underground tunnels. Truth be told, Martin was surprised that Jon would be accompanying him, Basira and Daisy (who would never pass up an opportunity to witness Tim Stoker make an idiot of himself) on their mission, and had looked to the woman he’d informed of his plan back at the Archives to tell her as much, but the look of fiendish amusement that decorated her features made the words spiral and swirl back down his throat like water in a plughole. 

He was dressed in the same pressed slacks and knitted green sweater vest he’d worn to work that day, shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal slender arms and an old-fashioned wristwatch. At his feet lay an overflowing, frayed brown satchel that looked as though it would burst at the seams at any given minute. Jon seemed deep in thought, and more peaceful than Martin had seen him as of late. Good. He’d been rather stressed recently over a series of interconnecting statements, and the computer virus that turned up every now and again certainly didn’t help matters. Maybe this was what he needed - an evening spying on his coworkers while they tried to go about their personal lives. Martin grinned. 

“Good lord!” Jon yelled with a surprised jolt, when Hozier started screaming in his ears, and his head snapped in the direction of the redhead, who dissolved into a fit of giggles as his thumb jabbed persistently on the volume button. Jon denied all accusations subsequent to the mission’s culmination, but he knew himself that he was using all his strength to fight back a smile of both amusement and… delight(?) at the, admittedly, very pleasant sight that was Martin Blackwood laughing. He couldn’t help but pay particular attention to the crinkles that appeared at the corners of his round eyes, squinted with good-natured mirth. Another thing he couldn’t help was the peculiar lopsided grin spreading across his own face. “You- you tit!” 

The redhead gasped for breath, stomach still heaving. Other passengers were staring, and Jon suddenly turned very red, but Martin didn’t seem to mind. “That’s a new one for the records,”

“That’s also a direct violation of The Tit Rule. I forced Elias into putting it at the back of contracts, but nobody reads it because they’re all cruel bastards,” Daisy called from her slumped position against Basira’s side on the far end, her feet hanging off the armrest and dangling in the air. “It states that Daisy Tonner is the only person alive that has permission to call people tits. You don’t even have them, Sims,”

“I hardly see how that’s-”

“Ah! No tits, no opinion. I’ll let you off with a warning this time, you titless tit, but you’d better sleep with an eye open if I hear you saying it again,”

“Right, duly noted,” Jon grumbled, more confused than anything. 

Leaning forwards, Basira probed the edge of the battered satchel with the tip of her boot. Daisy let out a small noise of surprise as she tipped back with the motion. “What’s in the bag?”

“Appliances. They’ll, uh, aid us in our… endeavours,” Jon said, more than a little ominously, before settling his cold gaze upon Martin. “I’m not forgiving you for the Hozier disrespect anytime soon. I expect a full apology letter to the Republic of Ireland on my desk tomorrow,”

“It’s taking a lot of strength for me to not call you a- a boob right now,” Martin said, glancing nervously over at Daisy, who had taken to listening to The Archers through her own headphones, knocking her shoes together absentmindedly. “I still don’t understand why we can’t listen to your old uni band… the one with the, uh, space… pirates?”

“Right, I’m going to need the home address of whoever told you about that,”

“That… isn’t happening. Sorry, Jon,” Martin felt a sharp elbow come into contact with his arm, and he turned to find Basira leaning in close. 

“Tim dug up some old videos yesterday, he emailed them to me. I’ll forward it to you, there’s more eyeliner in that shit than in a fucking Sephora,”

Their ragtag band of awkward date-crashers rocked up to the quaint, charming little restaurant with a spare half hour dedicated to setting up their vantage point - a cramped booth in the far corner, near the bar as per Daisy’s request - as well as the ‘appliances’ Jon had mentioned on the train ride over. With no small amount of blackmail and force on the blonde ex-cop’s part, they’d managed to swindle out the location of Sasha’s reserved table, and selected their own seats accordingly; the back corner provided a clear view across the restaurant, and all four of them could see the couple’s currently-unoccupied table by the condensated, steamy window, devoid of too many heads obstructing their line of vision. 

The appliances, as it turned out, consisted of a set of bulky jet-black binoculars and four walkie-talkies that Martin could’ve sworn he’d seen on display in the children’s section at the department store down the road from the Institute. 

“And here I was thinking we were being discreet,” Daisy grumbled, clipping the plastic communication device to the pocket of her trousers. 

“What are you talking about, Dais? Our boss hiding under a table with binoculars half his size definitely isn’t going to attract unwarranted attention,” Basira sneered, kicking the threadbare canvas satchel with the toe of her boot until it partially masked Jon and Martin’s hunched forms beneath the tabletop. “Here, at least use this to cover yourselves up a bit. And scoot back, all of London can see you right now,” 

Martin ducked his head further, drawing his knees up to his chest and resting his chin upon them. He was fully cognizant of the risk of allowing his hair to brush against the questionable underside of the table, and would rather not wind up with his head fused to it due to the malevolent workings of a rogue piece of aged chewing gum. Jon, a decent few inches his smaller, was not experiencing the same problem, and Martin fought back a snicker. He’d always been tetchy about his height, irritably muttering to Daisy when he was unable to reach a mug in the breakroom or a statement filed on a high shelf (deliberately, he liked to think), and visibly bristling when Tim used his head as a personal armrest. Nonetheless, Jon’s unfortunate height did have a silver lining, one that manifested in its own perplexing ways. Poorly hiding under a restaurant table as the shittiest form of moral support on the planet was, apparently, one of them. 

“Yeah, remind me why we’re under here again?” Martin whispered, burrowing himself further away from their peephole so that his back rested against the bottom of the booth seat. 

“So Tim and Sasha don’t see us, of course,” Jon muttered, as though the other man were born the previous day. 

“Right, because we blend in completely sitting under a table with a satchel in front of us. We can’t just, oh, I don’t know, sit at the table? You know, like normal people?”

“I’m not entirely sure our favourite Head Archivist knows what ‘normal’ is,” Basira said, watching the harried waitress scuttle away from their table after placing two menus down on the table, seemingly ignorant of the two grown men hiding behind a satchel. 

“‘Academic’ my ass,” Daisy added. “Now shut up, I think I see Stoker,”

As if on cue, Tim pulled open the glass door to the diner, standing behind it as he allowed his date to enter first, before swinging on the handle and waltzing in with the swagger and conviction of almost every politician under the sun, a demeanour that was not alien to the man that was more Hawaiian shirt than human skin. He seemed to be putting on a false display of grandeur in order to perpetuate a laugh from his date, who slapped his arm playfully as she stole a cursory glance around the room, ensuring that nobody was staring. Sasha’s pecan eyes swept directly over Daisy and Basira, who repeatedly muttered the word ‘watermelon’ to one another, changing the areas of emphasis and enunciation each time in their attempt to pass as two everyday people engaging in conversation, and not her coworkers stalking her. They didn’t even linger upon Jon and Martin, who were hidden so far back behind the table that they could not be discerned from where Sasha stood. In fact, Martin was pressing his back against Basira’s legs, his arms wrapped around Jon’s torso. Later on, neither man would admit that their brief embrace underneath a diner table played a surprisingly prominent role in the perpetration of mutual  _ feelings  _ for one another. 

“Esteemed colleagues,” Jon hissed into the frankly useless walkie-talkie. “Operation Under-the-Table has commenced,”

“Is that really what you’re calling it?” Martin toyed with the lace on his shoe. “Zero points for creativity,”

A sharp kick in the ribs from Basira shut him right up, and he scooted closer to the satchel for a view of the couple that was of a higher resolution. Martin got the feeling she’d be doing that a lot throughout… whatever this was. 

And thus, the mission began. 

Hour one. Not exactly too eventful, but there had already been a grand total of one awkward hand brush, and only a handful of minor casualties when they attempted to drink one milkshake with two straws, as seen in those old, mushy romcoms Martin was rather partial to. Cream dripped from both their faces, Tim more so than the giggling Sasha because he’d taken the initiative to try and lick it out of the glass once they’d collaboratively finished the drink, and she’d tipped the cup in the direction of his face, sending tufts of white cream spraying across his meticulously-gelled hair and button-down shirt. Martin couldn’t tell if people glared or tutted or whispered conspiratorially amongst themselves about the pair, not from his vantage point; he had not yet been awarded a turn with the binoculars, and had only received a mildly annoyed noise from Jon or a kick from Basira whenever he nagged about it. Jesus, his ribcage would be more purple than a fucking Ribena once they were finished. 

There was one thing that did bother him about the ordeal, however. Well, not  _ bother _ him, exactly, this entire affair had been orchestrated by him, but watching two of his closest friends simply exist together in a romantic setting irked him. Seeing Tim try and fail to catch the slogs of melting cream in his mouth with that same crooked, easygoing beam that never disappointed in getting him where he wanted to be in the romance department, and Sasha laughing jovially amidst her choking coughs (her water had gone down the wrong way in her mirth, and she paid the price for it), evoked a lonely sadness in Martin that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around. He’d tried dating in the past, girls and boys back home in Nottingham, people who didn’t tease about his freckles or his mother or his body, both from school before he’d left and at his variety of odd jobs that had been the backbone of him and his deteriorating mother’s sorry life prior to his move to London. They’d never lasted long, though; it was always that he  _ apologised too much  _ or  _ made things awkward.  _

With much prompting from the highly zealous Tim and Sasha, Martin had made a few awkward offers for dinner or drinks with Jon, but they were declined more often than not, and Martin would resort to less-than-subtle pining until he could get over himself. Strangely enough, Jon was a good deal more irritable on the days following one of Martin’s attempts. In a faraway parallel universe, the redhead liked to think that was his own way of ignoring his own feelings, but he knew in his heart of hearts that the Head Archivist was probably just irritated by him. 

Another hour stretched on agonisingly. To add to the list were two more hand brushes, followed by a genuine handhold and an instance in which Sasha had reached over to push a rogue strand of dark hair from Tim’s laughing eyes. In Martin’s opinion, it seemed to be going rather well. Also in Martin’s opinion, he’d need fuel if he was to continue the extremely strenuous task of people-watching from behind a satchel. Thus, he tapped Jon’s shoulder gently. 

“What is it, Martin?” Jon huffed, not tearing his eyes from the binoculars.

“Sorry, uh… can I- can I go ask a waiter for chicken strips?”

“What? No! No, you can’t,” Jon said indignantly. 

“Why not?”

“Because… because you’ll be abandoning the mission. We need all hands on deck,”

“You’re not even letting me  _ do  _ anything-”

“Okay, that isn’t true-”

“What are you two gasbags arguing about now?” came Basira’s voice, laced with a sigh of irritation. 

“Martin’s hungry,” Jon said, as though feeling hunger was a criminal offence. 

“And understandably so!” he retaliated. “It’s been, what, six hours? Since I had lunch? If you want me to help with this cursed mission, which, mind you, was my idea, Jonathan, you’ll need to let me eat something,”

“....Fine,” Jon relented, shaking hair from his eyes. “But we’re sharing,”

“Mm, you can keep telling yourself that,”

In the end, Martin ended up caving, and Daisy passed down a basket of chicken strips as surreptitiously as she could, which, admittedly, was not very much so at all. The men under the table sat silent for a brief period, dividing the chicken strips between them. They weren’t exactly the most gourmet pieces of breaded chicken in the world, to put it charitably, but the kind that were just the right amount of greasy that they could be consumed at any point in time and taste like a divine blessing from the heavens. They were also a confirmed cure for hangovers. 

Throughout his entire career at the Magnus Institute, Martin never once thought he’d bear witness to his boss, five feet and four inches of acerbity and overly-intense work ethic, gulp down chicken strips as though they were air, licking the residue and crumbs off his fingers with a haste that amused Martin immensely, though he refused to let Jon see it. 

Of course, nothing in their lives could run smoothly for long, and the two were presented with the problem of who would be given the utmost honour of the last chicken strip. 

“I mean… we can split it?” 

“I’m not asking Basira to pass a knife down here,”

“Well, I can halve it with my hands?”

“Don’t be silly, Martin, it’ll hardly be equal,”

“I never said it would be,”

Spoiler alert, it wasn’t. 

“That isn’t fair! There isn’t even any chicken in mine!”

“Sorry, Jonny, you get what you get and you don’t get upset,” 

“Here, break off some of yours,”

“What? No-”

“Shut the hell up, both of you!” came Daisy’s voice. “You’ll knock the-”

The satchel masking them from general public view slumped forward as they awkwardly wrestled beneath the table, ignoring the exasperated kicks pummeling at their backs. The two of them skidded across the floor, and Martin felt the last sliver of hope that they’d remain inconspicuous slowly trickle away as he felt hundreds of eyes seep into him. 

“Boss?”

Shit. 

“Hello, Tim,” Jon muttered, with as much dignity as he could muster lying on his stomach on a diner floor. 

“What are you even doing here?” Tim said, his brows furrowed as he toyed absently with a loose strand of hair that had escaped the clutches of his bun. 

“Listen, we- uh, we just wanted to make sure your date was going well,” Martin interjected, smiling nervously. “Sorry,”

Tim grinned, clutching at his chest dramatically. Martin wasn’t sure if his eyes were deceiving him, but the buttons on his shirt seemed to have come progressively undone as the evening wore on, a fair amount of chest exposed beneath the pale blue fabric. “Aw, Marto, I’m touched,”

In the background, the group could just about distinguish the tinkling sound of Sasha’s laughter as she recognised her coworkers seated in the faraway booth. 

“Mission accomplished, I suppose,” Jon cleared his throat. “Now, let’s never speak of this again,”

  
  


_ fin.  _

**Author's Note:**

> if you've made it this far, you're a swaggy sandwich, thank you for giving this a chance! 
> 
> also can someone PLEASE tell me the whole tragic love story about elias and peter i am Relatively new to tma so i don't know everything, also where the fuck can i find the big boy man video there are so many animatics but i can't find the original lmaooo


End file.
